Bears unveil plans for domed lakefront stadium

The Bears today unveiled plans for a $4.6B project to put "a fixed-roof domed stadium on a lakefront site" with a surrounding development. The club held a news conference at Soldier Field to unveil plans for "a state-of-the-art, publicly owned stadium, along with additional green and open space with access to the lakefront" on the Museum Campus. Bears President Kevin Warren laid out the team's full "vision for the Museum Campus, a new stadium and a reimagined and downscaled Soldier Field." The cost of the total project with the envisioned hotel, bars and restaurants -- "all the bells and whistles" -- will be "partly funded with 40-year bonds backed by the city’s hotel tax." The remaining debt on the renovation of Soldier Field would be "rolled into that 40-year payback plan." That $4.6B cost "still would not include taxpayer-backed infrastructure improvements needed to make the stadium -- and the whole Museum Campus -- more accessible" (CHICAGO SUN-TIMES, 4/24).